A former professor of mine has written a research paper that turned into a book. It took him three years to finish it.

In the end he came up with this nugget of wisdom: writing is a lonely process.

This is universally true. No one can help a writer write. Sure one can give inspiration and guidance, but the process of writing is a very lonely one. Communications over the phone become less frequent, going out to see friends (if there

are any left after such prolonged absence from a social scene) becomes a chore. Family members turn into maids to clean and prepare food, as the writer cannot be bothered to think of any daily routine but his work. One has to be a lucky person to have so many people understand the needs of a writer and leave him or her alone to do his work, and not kick him or her out on the curb.

Of course no human contact can drive someone wild, which is why I have Facebook. Yes, I admit it, in between my writing marathons I do occasionally turn my internet on and check out who’s doing what on this addictive website. Sometimes all I get is pictures of people’s adorable pets (cats mostly), other times I stumble onto heated discussions. One such discussion was on an article written by Julia Latinina for Weekly Journal. I personally enjoy Latinina’s writing, because, well, she is very good at it. The article To Secure These Rights contained a part where Latinina discussed the merits of letting a man go free because he was bitch slapped by a detective to get him to tell where he stashed a body of a child he murdered. This part was what the discussion was about. We have laws for a reason. A detective cannot physically abuse a person in custody. But should the murderer go free because of it? Personally I think the detective should have been punished for breaking the law, but so should have been the man who murdered a child. Fortunately for the scumbags of this earth, I do not make laws. Of course that neither here nor there! What interested me more was the part of the article about the recent event in Georgia.

Latinina was recently traveling in Georgia and had a discussion with a few Georgian citizens who had their views on the Burjanadze debacle of May 26. Everyone agreed that the opposition staged a protest backed by Russian government and that the point of the opposition was to grab the control of the country for themselves. Turns out that the dissatisfaction did not lie in what the government did, but how they did it. Yes, they should have been dispersed. Just not the way the government did it. Apparently what got to Latinina, and frankly myself as well, was a statement of one citizen who claimed that the government existed for the sole purpose of being criticized. And here I was thinking that’s what parents were for.

In a democratic society government is a collection of human beings chosen to represent a larger collection of human beings that make up a country. Yes, we forget they are human until they do unbelievably stupid things like getting caught with their hand in a cookie jar (aka government treasury), but they are still people we chose to elect. We don’t agree with them most of the time, and we question them all the time, we get them fired, we don’t reelect them, we give them power and then take it away if not satisfied, but let’s not be so arrogant as to believe that they are not a mirror of our society. Why do we think that a protester can hit someone without getting hit back? In what country are protesters ever allowed to do whatever they want whenever they want? How would ‘peaceful’ demonstrators with covered faces and sticks in hand fare in the middle of Kremlin?

The problem is that the Georgian government has raised the bar on a standard citizen to government relationship. Georgian citizens no longer expect the same treatment they expected under the former government. They expect to be treated equally and fairly. These expectations are valid, and necessary for a society to progress. Same goes for the government, that is I suspect made up of at least eighty percent human beings. But with the same token, people have to realize that the government does not exist for the sole purpose of criticism. No one need stroke their ego - it is big enough to inflate a fleet of hot air balloons, but we can at least say that while the government is trying to change for the better, so will we, its citizens. Next time there’s a peaceful demonstration, it will be without sticks, half covered faces, and without bribery. One can only hope.